M wakes up at 6 am every morning and drinks a glass of filtered water from a refrigerator that was purchased less than a year ago. A prominent digital display on the freezer door informs M about the temperatures inside the refrigerator and freezer compartments, and the status of the replaceable air and water filters. These indicators turn from green to orange when it is time to order new filters, and to red when the filters need to be replaced. The refrigerator can order these filters automatically from Amazon, but M is not yet comfortable with having a kitchen appliance make purchasing decisions.

In fact, M is disappointed with the expensive refrigerator. The external water/ice dispenser was the key feature that led M to choose this particular model because M is concerned about of the quality of tap water in the residence, and all members of the household drink a lot of water throughout the day. In the refrigerator models that feature water dispensers, many are internal. The users have to keep the refrigerator door open while pouring water into a glass or water bottle. The model M selected was one of the few with an external dispenser, promising convenient and energy-saving access to filtered water.

As it turned out, filling water bottles from the refrigerator water dispenser is difficult and messy due to a design flaw. The plastic nozzle from which water is dispensed is hidden from sight, making it difficult to align the opening of the water bottle with the nozzle. The result is spilled water. Everyone in M's family refills their bottles with water several times a day. Water spills, the kitchen floor gets messy, and someone has to mop a few times a day.

Design flaws in product features that are frequently used become amplified by repeated experience of the adverse consequences. M's positive opinion about the refrigerator's brand, based on 15 years of satisfying use with the previous refrigerator owned by the family, has now turned less favorable. While the old model did not feature a fancy digital display, its water/ice dispenser worked flawlessly.

M boils water for coffee in a recently purchased electric kettle. Inexpensive and easy to use, M's previous kettle was safe and easy to use. It had a single-purpose function, time-to-boil was fast, and the appliance automatically turned off once the water boiled, or when it was nearly empty. After several years of frequent daily use, the kettle malfunctioned.

Captivated by the latest generation of kettles, M had a hard time selecting a replacement among models with features such as precise temperature control, adjustable temperature control, multi-temperature control, keep-warm controls, and remote control via wireless smartphone app. Moreover, the prices of advanced kettles seemed reasonable given the added capabilities, and yet, they were twice or three times more expensive than the single feature kettle. M wondered whether the swell of technology features was an overkill for the task of boiling water. 

M settled on a cordless model with pleasantly glowing blue buttons, keep-warm feature, and precise multi-temperature controls. The kettle's options included boiling the water or heating the water to lower temperatures recommended for white, green, or black tea. The appliance's price was triple that of a simple boil-the-water electric kettle. 

Although M and family members frequently drink tea, they don't bother with the various tea-related temperature settings on the kettle. M is concerned about the energy wasted when the kettle is set to keep-warm and so this feature is also rarely used. However, the layout of the multi-temperature buttons is confusing and often M and other family members unintentional switch from boiling to a lower temperature setting. As a result, they end up with a luke-warm beverage and find this very annoying.

At home, M likes to drink instant coffee which, despite the popularity of home roasting, grinding, and brewing of coffee beans, accounts for half the sales of coffee worldwide. M prefers instant because:

This is M's list and it cannot explain why M's good friend A takes an opposite approach to coffee. A roasts small batches of raw beans in an artisanal roaster, grinds a few beans for each cup in a high-end burr grinder for ultimate freshness, aroma, and flavor, and makes the coffee with a high-end Italian espresso machine. It may seem irrational to use this expensive and time consuming process for each cup of coffee. Compared to M's, A's coffee is:

To understand the motivation behind A's coffee-making efforts, let's look back at M's list of reasons for preferring his instant alternative. Asking A's opinion about items six through eight on M's list would reveal that:

A also greatly enjoys having full control over the coffee-making process and he enjoys experimenting and tweaking its various aspect. The end result is extremely satisfying to A, as are the complements received from family and friends. Seen from A's perspective, expensive and effortful coffee making is completely rational.

Across town, M's brother and sister-in-law just stick a cartridge of high-quality coffee into an espresso maker that they keep in their bedroom. Like M, they want to minimize the time and effort involved in the preparation of their morning cup and, like A, they appreciate excellent coffee and dislike instant.

M's colleague, G prepares coffee using a simple aluminum stove-top espresso maker, a coffee making method favored in Italy. G uses roasted beans purchased from a local coffee house that takes pride in its freshly roasted, high quality, fair trade beans. It took a little time to figure out the stove-top coffee pot, but after that, G's coffee making has been a fast and easy process.

We saw four different ways to make coffee. Each choice and process drives an industry geared toward offering consumers a product that responds to needs, desires and preferences more complex than the basic act of preparing and drinking coffee. 

What we learn from this example is that:

One morning, M noticed that coffee will probably run out by the end of the week. Within seconds, M switches from skimming an article in a newspaper app, to the Amazon app. M scans the coffee jar's bar-code, selects the matching product in the search results, and uses the 1-Click purchase option to pay. A new package of coffee will be delivered the next day and M is back to the newspaper, waiting for the water in the kettle to boil.

M is not an impatient or impulsive person, and yet, when it comes to spontaneous purchases that occur at a point of need, M has a propensity for bypassing more rational and economical ways to purchase goods. These include options such as combining multiple items in a single order, price comparison, and exploration of new options--the type of actions that characterized M's shopping behavior only a few years ago.

Grocery shopping, which for M used to be a time-consuming weekend activity that included preparing a shopping list and making trips to several stores, has now blended flawlessly into M's daily bursts of atomic online purchases, often of a single item.

In fact, during the 10 minutes that pass between waking up and taking a sip from the first coffee of the day, M completes numerous tasks, some compound, other micro-tasks, some sequential and other simultaneous. Here's a partial list: 

Just reading the list is exhausting, and yet M makes no mental effort to perform so many simultaneous tasks in rapid succession.

Experience designers spend a lot of time understanding tasks in order to optimize, simplify, and if possible, eliminate extraneous aspects. Tasks can be prioritized by the frequency of their occurrence, how dependent they are on other tasks, whether they take precedence over other tasks, their complexity, and so on:

Another observation about the sequence of tasks M completes in the morning, is how unique it is to our times. M's primary activity is preparing and drinking coffee--an experience that is centuries old. Interspersing morning coffee with a complex array of personal and work related tasks performed in quick succession--this reflects a behavioral change enabled by the fusion of technology and experience design.

The availability of all manner of content on demand - anytime, anywhere - is powerful. Our habits and behavioral patterns change as we fold into our lives the devices and activities that deliver this rich access at a relatively low cost. We adapt and learn to fill the gaps between life-sustaining activities with bursts of new activities.

And so, M can accomplish a lot while idling. Throughout the day M keeps checking news and other social network sites regularly. Various apps send notifications to M's phone, which can be accessed from M's laptop, phone, and iPad. M still subscribes to the home delivery of the Sunday edition of the New York Times. It used to be an anticipated weekend leisure activity, but the truth is that nowadays, M never finds the time to sit down and enjoy the paper. In fact, M begins to feel stressed from the intense and seemingly never-ending interaction with technology. Technology, which was supposed to save time and money, seems to be all consuming and, micro transaction by micro transaction, also expensive.

In recognition of user fatigue and mental overload, experience designers must develop and continually evolve engagement strategies that deal with task fragmentation and shorter attention spans.